


Talking

by butterflydreaming (chrysalisdreams)



Category: Cardcaptor Sakura
Genre: Canon - Manga, Gen, Implied Relationships
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-03
Updated: 2018-07-03
Packaged: 2019-06-04 21:26:40
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,720
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15155975
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/chrysalisdreams/pseuds/butterflydreaming
Summary: Fujitaka and Yue sit down for a long conversation about Clow Reed, past lives, alternate selves, and personal loss.Basically, this is almost four thousand words of just talking.Spoilers for the Master of the Clow arc of the manga. Doesn't touch on Clear Card at all.





	Talking

 

Fujitaka Kinomoto and Eriol Hiiragizawa were having another long-distance phone call where the conversation was going around in circles. “Maybe I haven’t been clear,” Fujitaka said. An uncharacteristic testiness showed in his voice. “I don’t know anything about the man we used to be. His personality, his memories -- only you know Clow Reed, the man.”

“Do I, though?” Eriol answered with a lilt of humor. “Does anyone ever know himself?”

“Please, Hiiragizawa-san.” He pressed fingers between his eyebrows to ease the headache forming. “You are the only one who can answer my questions.”

“Not entirely so,” Eriol countered. “In fact, you may be able to help with some trouble our past self left for me. The mirror we hold up to ourselves may not show us who we want to see. To know about a person, ask those closest to him.”

“You mean, Sakura-san’s two…” Fujitaka trailed off. He wasn’t sure what to call the magic beings that his daughter kept beside her.

“Specifically, the guardian who depended most on Clow Reed. He seems to blame me for this outcome. Not outright, yet the resentment clouds our understandings. Perhaps Yue will be more able to speak with you than he can with me.”

-o-

On a Sunday afternoon at the Kinomoto house, Touya stopped Yue before he could change back. “Y’know,” Touya suggested, “if these ‘false alarms’ are going to keep happening, you could just stay for dinner.”

Yue made a dismissive noise. “It would be cruel to deny my other self your father’s cooking,” he said.

Touya chose to ignore the tone. “Was that a joke?” he teased.

Yue, ashamed for being unfriendly, offered a confession out of remorse. “I sense Clow, but I cannot tell at first that it is your father. Now that he has half of Clow’s magic… Until now, Clow’s  _ kehai _ has meant a need for me to be present. I will go, now.”

“I wasn’t completely kidding,” Touya said. “Why not talk to my dad? Directly? Yuki talks with him all the time, so I know you know he’s approachable.”

Yue’s response was a genuine question. “Why would I need to?”

“Well, it can’t hurt. You hardly said a word when you were introduced. A real conversation is probably overdue.”  

-o-

A friendly smile already beaming, Yukito knocked at the open office door. “Hello,” he called in toward Fujitaka, who was seated at the desk of his office.

“Tsukishiro-kun!” Fujitaka responded in welcome. “Please, come in. How have you been?”

Yukito entered and closed the door behind him. “Well. And you?” They had a minute of genial chatting until Yukito said, “Sorry, but I’m going to change now.” Then, in a moon-white flare of mystical wings, he was surrounded in a feather chrysalis. The wings parted a moment later to reveal Yue. He descended lightly until his feet touched the floor.

Before the transformation, Fujitaka had started to get up to greet Yukito. The sight of the transformation stopped him in place. The floor had also lighted up, marked with a spinning circle that Fujitaka knew was “his” magic circle. It was fascinating and alarming at the same time to feel and see the magic occurrence.   

“Thank you for making time to meet, Kinomoto-sensei,” Yue began. He sat down at the chair in front of Fujitaka’s desk and folded his hands in his lap.

“Of course, Yue-san,” Fujitaka answered. “I usually have my office hours at this time for my students. I reserved the time this afternoon for our talk.”

He moved some loose papers on the top of his desk aside in a stack. “I agree that in light of recent… revelations… we might have some things to discuss. I have a number of questions. Sakura-san did her best to explain much of what has been ongoing for several years now. Hiiragizawa-san -- my other half in a manner of speaking --” he joked, “and even Nadeshiko-san, when she came to see me, filled in a bit more.” He stood up from his chair, giving in to his restlessness to cross to the tea kettle in the corner of the room. “Can I offer you some tea, Yue-san?”

Yue looked at his hands. “No. Thank you for your kindness.” 

Fujitaka fidgeted over the simple preparation of his cup of tea. “Hiiragizawa-san advised that I should speak with you to know what my past self was like. I don’t have any memories of being Clow Reed. I want to try to understand what motivated him to set these secret events in motion. Why I would put my future children in danger?”

“Perhaps, after you know more of Clow’s life, the patterns of his thinking will make a change in your own.” Yue felt the crushing reminder of loss compressing his chest. Whenever his memories turned to Clow, he relived the helplessness of learning of Clow’s reincarnation. Yue had not spoken at length with anyone in a long while. When he learned that Sakura’s father wanted to ask him about Clow, he had been cautious, but also curious. Now that they had met, he felt a pull toward conversation with Fujitaka. The magic that had gone to Fujitaka after Sakura split it felt like a safe place that was familiar. Yue had been able to speak to Clow about anything, without reserve. He had lost that, too, in losing Clow.

He appreciated that Fujitaka did not rush him to continue. “You, who you are now, are untouched by the visions that plagued my former master.”

“Mh, I see.” Fujitaka sat again behind his side of the desk. Fujitaka looked at Yue while he sorted out Yue’s meaning. “What’s on your mind, Yue-san?”

Again, Yue was slow to reply. He did not say what he was thinking, that much was on his mind that troubled him to share. Yue began, “Your future self may wish that he had protected you from becoming… who you will be.”

“You mean, because it will be like learning something about  _ myself _ that I did not know?”

“How would it be to be told things about yourself that are unpleasant? Things that cannot be undone?” He asked each question in low sibilance. “Nor would you be able to remove this knowledge from yourself once it has been revealed. Will it change you to have your answer?” 

“Can I ask you this? Is the nature of a person his knowledge? Do you think that I would become more like Clow Reed if I became aware of his history, that I would think like him if I understood his reasoning?”

When Yue felt sure of his composure, he said,  “In a manner of speaking, you and I both have two selves.”

“If I am in some ways like you, a person of two personalities, is the difference only because I don’t yet know my other life?”

“Your question touches on my own… musings,” Yue answered, thinking. “I would keep the fruit of knowledge from Yukito if I could.”

Fujitaka reclined in his office chair. It squeaked from years of steady use. “You’re implying that ignorance might be bliss,” he probed.

“Perhaps you would also prefer to remain in Eden.”

Fujitaka laughed, then apologized. “My field is archeology,” he explained. “Moreover, I teach. Pursuit of knowledge is pursuit of truth. That’s something I believe in.” He studied Yue for a several moments of mutual silence. “Then again,” he sighed, “I am a father. I know there was no way to keep my children innocent, but it would have been a hard decision to allow them to be hurt, if I’d had the choice. Still, I wouldn’t change who they are now.” He paused. “I say that, and then I think of how Touya-kun was as a child. If I could have guarded him from some things, I wonder--” he shook his head. “No. It’s speculation. As for myself,” he smiled a small smile, “when it concerns me, I want to know.” 

Yue regarded Fujitaka intently. “That is like Clow,” he said.

“And did it get him into trouble?” Fujitaka asked.

Yue sighed. “I never questioned my master’s actions,” he answered. 

Fujitaka, hands on his desk blotter, leaned forward. “Did he… I… do this kind of thing before? Putting innocents in peril for his own ends? Because, as I understand it, my past incarnation anticipated the danger my daughter would have to face. These weren’t simply puzzles to solve. How can a grown man be resolved to threatening the well-being of a small child?”

Yue shook his head. “We may not have been able to wait any longer than the years that passed. Certainly, all Clow’s magic was stretched to the limit of endurance. I could not have lasted longer, had it not been for Touya-san’s gift.”

Restive, Fujitaka drummed his fingers on the desktop. “That’s another thing. Why Sakura-san? Why not Touya-kun? Touya-kun would have diligently collected the magic cards, if they even had to be scattered to begin with! If you -- and I don’t mean to be accusatory, only speculative -- if you had stayed with the Clow book, could you have not prevented the cards from becoming scattered? And would you not have judged Touya-kun suitable to hold the magic cards, at least until they could be transferred to Sakura-san?”

“Your conjecture is reasonable,” Yue sighed. “However, Clow did not create the events. He acted based on the future that he foresaw.”

Fujitaka grimaced. “That’s where we get into a conundrum. Was it all fate? Was he as much a puppet of fate as we all were players in these events? If so, then why the act? Why a guardian of the cards, if Kerberus could not avoid falling asleep on his watch? Why a judgement, if Sakura-chan was fated to become the master, regardless?”

“Indeed,” Yue murmured. “Why?” His feline eyes studied Fujitaka.

“Perhaps I am asking the wrong questions,” Fujitaka pondered. “Let me ask you this. Were you happy to serve Clow? Was he a good man, would you say?”

“I could not do otherwise but serve him. Yet it was my greatest happiness, nonetheless.” Yue was slower in his answer of the second question. “Was he a good man? I find it difficult to answer such a question at all.”

“Try,” Fujitaka urged. “Please.”

“Clow…” Yue sighed. “Clow defied morality. He lived outside of society, therefore he could not be measured by the mores of any one time or place. Even with as little as Kerberus and I interacted with the populace, we could see how time transformed the thinking of any age. That which was unthinkable in England was unquestioned in Japan, as the centuries passed in our travels.”

When he paused, Fujitaka saved him from going into greater depth. “This, I do understand. He was very long lived. He was experienced in the world, then? Still, some mores are close to universal. Murder and theft, as harsh examples.”

“And yet the eating of meat is an abomination to one people but celebrated by another. Nor does theft count if the wronged party are not of one’s clan, among cultures that exist still today.” Yue held up a hand, forestalling counterargument. “Forgive my didacticism. The spirit of your question is plain to me. And so I will say, yes: Clow was a good man. He was true to his own morality. His care of his creations was something that I can only call love. Though we called him master, we loved him and we were loved in return, even the least of us. How rarely did he ask for something from us that we were not pleased to give!”

Fujitaka caught the subtlety of the phasing. “Maybe you can tell me about one of those times,” he asked. “I have done things I’m not proud of, myself, so don’t feel that you slander him.”

“That is the very thing,” said Yue, “for which there is no unlearning of the answer. I do not wish to enumerate the acts for which Clow himself felt remorse. I cannot do so fairly unless I give you the context of how they came to pass. A context that I don’t always have even to give myself.” 

“Maybe the important thing is that he, my past self, felt remorse.” Fujitaka commented. 

Yue cast Fujitaka a look of gratitude. “Is that so?”

“Enough if he felt remorse? Yes, I think it is.” Fujitaka contemplated. “If he could see events to come, but believed himself an agent of fate… I suppose it might be like realizing you’re about to have a traffic accident, seeing in a split second how it will play out without being able to prevent it. You slam the brakes and turn the wheel, but you can’t stop the collision.” He thought for a while. “You said that we are alike in having two lives. Do you think of Tsukishiro-kun as your reincarnation, of sorts?” he asked. A kind smile attempted to soften the aggressiveness of his query.

“Hmph!” Yue’s response was sudden and dismissive, startling even him with its intensity. He felt embarrassment at the vehemence of his wordless denial. He remembered calling Yukito “that loser” not long ago in the same way.

“Please excuse the intrusion,” Fujitaka apologized.

Yue controlled his dismay. “No, please excuse my manner,” he said.

Fujitaka laughed suddenly. “Listen to us, apologizing for doing the very thing we sat down to do. May we dispense with the fear of misspeaking?” He smiled with earnestness at Yue, and leaned a little forward toward the Moon Guardian.

The motion startled Yue into taking a short, sharp breath, and his eyes at first widened. Then he shut them. He turned his head to the side, turning away from the smiling man across the desk.

“Yue-san,” Fujitaka said with concern.

“ _ Nandemonai, _ ” Yue said, negating his response.

“It is something. Please, tell me. We had both been kept from knowing this important thing for far too long. Hiiragizawa-san is not forthcoming. I would prefer to know.”

“For a moment, in your eyes I almost could see…” He stopped. “When I feel Clow’s  _ kehai, _ but,” Yue said in a voice almost too quiet to hear, “I know he is gone, it is painful.”

“I feel that from you,” Fujitaka said with concern. “That your sadness is profound.”

Alarm tinted Yue’s voice. “You sense it?”

“I feel it like my own,” Fujitaka revealed. “In the past I have felt empathy with my children, I think as any loving parent does. At this moment you could be one of my own children. As you were Clow Reed’s child.”

“Newly made, but never a child,” Yue corrected. “I was never an adolescent, not until my other self was required to be so.”

“He never had children?”

“There were no children in our home. There were direct descents of Clow, yet none that he raised himself.”

“Then, he was unmarried?”

Yue’s lips made a thin line. A long pause preceded his unadorned answer. “Yes.”

“You won't elaborate?”

“It isn't something… that seems right to discuss,” Yue said. “Circumstance made Clow alone in the world except for us, his creations. He didn't often speak of it, but his heart longed for many of the things an ordinary man could have.”

“Then I am glad that in a way, my life has fulfilled that longing,” Fujitaka replied seriously.

Yue nodded. “I will remember to be grateful for that as well.”

“It isn't simple, is it?” Fujitaka looked at Yue with sympathy.

“How do you mean?”

“After Nadeshiko passed, colleagues would remind me that I was still a young man. That my children needed a mother. They meant well. I understood that even then.

“I had no family as a child. My family began with Nadeshiko. She was with me, even after she was gone. Yet there was an expectation for me to go forward. Everyone seemed to think I needed to go toward a future without her.

“Yue-san, I can't begin to understand the impact of your loss, to you. Because of the way others acted toward me then, I understand this. I hope it helps you to hear that. I wanted someone to say it to me then.”

Yue said, “In fact, you may understand my grief better than anyone else.”

“Give others a chance to try,” said Fujitaka quietly.

“You mean, Touya.”

“You can trust him, Yue-san,” Fujitaka said. “Tsukishiro-kun and my son are close.”

Yue sighed, long and slow. “He sees much. He keeps his thoughts to himself. It is a trait… I like. It does make a conversation difficult, however.”

“A lot can be understood without talking,” Fujitaka mused. “Just being there for someone counts.”

“I agree and yet, speaking with you now reminds me,” Yue spoke slowly, words snagging on memory, “of having someone with whom intimate conversation came as easily as flying. Even when I feared what he would think. We would speak for hours. Days could go by without a word, because silence was comfortable, too. And then we would speak again, and it was as rain in summer, almost an indulgence, but also necessary.” The shine in Yue’s eyes when he looked up was more than the light reflecting. A slight wetness clumped his eyelashes. “That is the man you should know Clow was. Let that be enough.”

“I don't often have other adults to talk to about anything this personal,” said Fujitaka. “It’s the time and place I was born into. I’m not an anthropologist, but in my research there is overlap, and I know that even in modern times, it is normal in some cultures to express more openly. I think it must be tiring,” he commented with an easy laugh. “A little distance is a comfortable level of communication for me.” He thought a while. “Maybe a little distance from who I was in a past life is good, too,” he contemplated. “I am still very curious, but maybe it is not as important to have certainty as I had thought.”

“If only Yukito would come to the same conclusion you have,” said Yue.

“Is it really the same? You are a living… ah, being.”

“We will never meet, but through the impressions we make on others,” Yue said. “What I know and see of his life is not unlike my former master’s foretelling of your life.”

“Forgive me, but you don’t seem to have a high regard for your ‘other self.’ Wouldn’t Clow Reed see my achievements as dull, compared to his own? I’m proud of what I have done and am building on, but compared to a sorcerer, well, I wonder if he wouldn’t be irritated at a simple life like mine is.”

Yue didn’t immediately answer. “I have wondered.” Yue stalled out, started again after another troubled pause. “Is Yukito the life Clow wanted for me? The things he longed for me to have, as he longed for a simple family life, a life unburdened by his strong magic?”

“Did you ever express a wish for such things yourself?”

Yue’s answer was definite. “No. Never.” He shook his head, once, sharply. “I was happy with Clow, as we were. I did not want anything to change. My wish was that my feelings for Clow would never change. I would always stand between him and the world. I was there to serve him and to guard him.”

Fujitaka’s eyes widened before he looked away until his thoughts could sort out his reaction. He was taken aback by Yue’s intense fidelity. He wondered if Yue guarded Sakura so fiercely. Fujitaka wasn’t sure he was comforted by the idea.

“I didn’t realize,” Yue continued softly, unvarnished resentment in his tone, “that I would be burdened with looking after Yukito. Well. I didn’t choose any of this. I didn’t give any thought to what it meant to play the role and fulfill my duty.”

“I understand,” Fujitaka replied.

“How do you mean?” Yue challenged.

Fujitaka, caught, gave a small shrug. “It seemed the supportive thing to say,” he admitted. “I think I understand that you are in a situation that’s a challenge for you. It would be a challenge for anyone,” he amended.

“You have more to say,” Yue responded, with as much a question as a statement.

Fujitaka chose his words carefully. “You may be doing a disservice to yourself and Tsukishiro-kun. I wonder if it couldn’t it be more of a collaboration.” He got up and with slow movement, moved his chair around the desk until he could sit directly in front of Yue. He leaned forward, hands rested at his knees. “It goes back to my original questions. I wish I could ask Clow Reed himself, but...” Fujitaka paused.

“But he is gone,” Yue completed for Fujitaka. “Clow is gone. I live.” With downcast eyes, he studied the edge of his suit, where the blue strip met the white cloth. His brows pulled together as he frowned. Distantly, a clock chimed the hour. Yue looked up.

“Don’t worry about the time,” Fujitaka said.

Yue shook his head. He stood up. “You have given me something to think about. However, Yukito is scheduled at his part-time job, and Touya is expecting him. I will go.”

Not waiting for a response, he changed back into his “false self,” Yukito Tsukishiro, leaving a disoriented young man and a mildly exasperated professor looking at each other. Yukito smiled helplessly. Fujitaka smiled back in response. “All finished?” Yukito asked.

Fujitaka opened his hands in a gesture of surrender. “For  now,” he said.

 

- _owari_ -

 

Author’s Note:

Turning this ages-old work-in-progress scrap of conversation into some kind of finished fic has made me nostalgic for those early weebie years of writing CCS fanfic. I’m not any less of an embarrassment, but so much has changed about being a fanfic writer. I really miss writing stuff with other people who were writing stuff or at least talking about writing stuff.

I did my best with the honorifics. Back in (mumble mumble) when we glomped our faves and squeed over our OTPs, in this fandom a lot of us peppered our fics with Japanese words and honorifics, which I’m pretty sure no one does now except when they use “-chan.” So I left those in and went with it. They do add a certain nuance about relationships.

 


End file.
